# Choose when to stop technological advancement **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 3, 2018, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341 "2018-06-03T02:22:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/21 "2018-06-04T10:09:44Z")
> [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](#): > > When I was in high school in 1992, my German textbook included an article titled _Die Freizeitgesellschaft_ (the free time society). The gist of it was exactly the point you’re making here : technology will allow us to work much shorter hours or even not at all, allowing us to spend most of our time on hobbies. > > That book was published in the early 1970. Almost 50 years later, I’m pretty sure that _Die Freizeitgesellschaft_ isn’t going to happen in my lifetime, perhaps never. If anything, I feel that we are much more stressed-out than our parents used to be. They occasionally had problems at work, but not that often, and the general pace of life seemed much less hectic. So, technology has definitely made lots of job obsolete, and we’re probably just seeing the start of this trend, but it hasn’t really offered us more free time. I don’t have much confidence that the ultimate end will be my second option (increased leisure for all) either. I see more and more of an underclass building up as less and less decent jobs go around, (and those who have good jobs still working 30-50 hours a week.) Stopping in the mid 90s would have has some automation, computerization that made some tasks easier but you would still need people to operate them. There’s no way the good jobs: people who want good jobs ratio is ever going to rise again, ad will continue to drastically fall leaving misery for the majority unless option 2 is embraced, (which it won’t be) ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/22 "2018-06-04T12:42:32Z")
> [@Mr\_Shine](#): > > … I see more and more of an underclass building up as less and less decent jobs go around… Exhibit A : the gig economy. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/23 "2018-06-04T13:57:18Z")
Note in my previous post the colon after “good jobs”. It was supposed to be without a space like a ratio, but the board software changed it to a smiley. Asimovian’s change makes the smiley disappear but now it doesn’t look like a ratio. Just making that clear. Thanks for the effort though Asimovian. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/24 "2018-06-04T14:30:54Z")
I’d freeze it to whenever a technologically caused global catastrophe happened. I can see that happening with nanotechnology in the not too far distant future. I’m very wary of machines becoming sentient. I’d want to ride the “just about, but not quite sentient” line for as long as possible. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/25 "2018-06-04T14:33:14Z")
ETA: Just noticed. past only. :smack: I’d really like it if social media didn’t exist, but if I froze it there (say, 2002) a lot of other stuff that I really liked would be gone (e.g. decent smart phones). So I wouldn’t freeze anytime in the past. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/26 "2018-06-04T23:40:59Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > ETA: Just noticed. past only. :smack: I’d really like it if social media didn’t exist, but if I froze it there (say, 2002) a lot of other stuff that I really liked would be gone (e.g. decent smart phones). So I wouldn’t freeze anytime in the past. Yes, in retrospect I would leave that caveat out. There are some really interesting ideas here I hadn’t considered, like the freeze/unfreeze cycle hoping human morality catches up to its available technology. Personally though I wouldn’t freeze it at all, I’m interested to know what’s coming in the future, after all its not so long ago we couldn’t even be having this conversation! Thanks for the answers everyone 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2018, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/27 "2018-06-05T02:28:09Z")
> [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](#): > > When I was in high school in 1992, my German textbook included an article titled _Die Freizeitgesellschaft_ (the free time society). The gist of it was exactly the point you’re making here : technology will allow us to work much shorter hours or even not at all, allowing us to spend most of our time on hobbies. > . The interesting part of this, though, is how will our iron-clad economic theory deal with the absence of labor as the metric for wealth distribution? As wealth is created, to whom will it be distributed, when there is no longer labor as a badge of the deserving? Remember that Orwwell (1984) explained that the work to produce useless and wasteful goods (weapons for perpetual war) was the mechanism by which the elite classes kept the lower classes poor and busy. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2018, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/28 "2018-06-05T13:30:30Z")
Never. For one thing, I don’t believe you could just stop it without fundamentally altering what it means to be human. I also think that if you tried, humans would then focus on other things that would be worse. Finally, technology is a two edged sword, and while it has certainly done and continues to do substantial harm to the planet it also is the key to potentially saving it and all the remaining species, including ourselves. Halting our progress at any point up to and including where we are today would basically mean we accept extinction for ourselves and every other species sooner rather than later (or perhaps ‘never’). ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2018, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341/29 "2018-06-05T13:37:19Z")
[snark]Right before the creation of Facebook.[/snark] [non-snark]I agree with **XT** : > [@XT](#): > > Never. For one thing, I don’t believe you could just stop it without fundamentally altering what it means to be human. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choose-when-to-stop-technological-advancement/815341.md?page=1)